Benjamin Franklin

Life and beginnings

Benjamin Franklin was born in Boston on January 17, 1706, which was January 6 by the Old Style calendar. He was the tenth son among the seventeen children of a man who made soap and candles, one of the lowlier artisan crafts. Britannica says he learned to read very early, had one year of grammar school and another with a private teacher, and that his formal education ended at 10. At 12 he was apprenticed to his brother James, a printer. He mastered the trade between 1718 and 1723 and was proud of it for the rest of his life. In 1721 James founded the New-England Courant. In 1722, at 16, Benjamin wrote 14 essays signed Silence Dogood, mocking funeral eulogies and Harvard students. He took pleasure in the fact that his brother believed only a learned wit could have written them. A boy writing in the voice of a middle-aged woman is a method he would use again. It is not a political appointment.^[1]

At 17 he left Boston. Finding no work in New York, he went to Philadelphia. On a Sunday morning, tired and hungry, he bought three pennies’ worth of bread, got three large rolls, and walked up Market Street with one under each arm. Deborah Read, standing at her family’s door, thought he looked awkward and ridiculous. She later became his wife. In the spring of 1724 Governor Keith urged him to set up for himself and sent him to London to choose type. Only at sea did he learn that Keith had not delivered the promised letters of credit. He worked as a printer in London, wrote a deist pamphlet he later repudiated, and burned nearly every copy he still had. In 1726 he returned to Philadelphia with a Quaker merchant. The guide’s rise from ordinary printer to newspaper publisher fits the apprenticeship. It does not yet make the Founding Father’s résumé.^{[1] [2]}

Defining achievements

Britannica counts him among the foremost Founding Fathers: he helped draft the Declaration of Independence and signed it, represented the United States in France during the Revolution, and was a delegate to the Constitutional Convention. The National Archives preserves the Declaration as the 1776 founding document. This essay does not turn the Archives’ exhibit notes into a list of every edit he made. What can be set side by side is the biography’s statement that he helped draft and sign, and the Archives’ record of the document itself. The guide adds that in 1747 he moved into politics. The biography passage checked here does not use 1747 as that turn. It moves from the printing of the 1720s to public roles in the Revolution. The year stays in the guide. It is not promoted into a checked political chronology.^{[1] [2] [4]}

The science is also not one kite. The biography says he made important contributions to the nature of electricity, including the finding that positive and negative charges occur in exactly equal amounts, the principle now called the conservation of charge. The guide says he contributed to fields as diverse as electricity and oceanography. Oceanography is not in the biographical passage used here, so only the electrical finding is kept. The kite is the center of many popular stories. This biography places his science by the conservation of charge, not by one outdoor performance.^{[1] [2]}

Legacy and interpretation

The legacy is several trades in one person, not a necessary road from a press to a constitution. He left school at 10, trained his prose on The Spectator, and wrote in the Autobiography that prose was a principal means of his advancement. Competent writing was rare enough in the 18th century that it drew notice. That explains how an apprentice became a public man. It does not make every colonial printer a diplomat. One path is not a law of the trade.^[1]

He also left writing he did not want to keep. The 1725 Dissertation on Liberty and Necessity argued that people have no real freedom of choice and so are not morally responsible. He later repudiated the pamphlet. An author’s legacy includes the book he burned and the declaration he signed. Keeping only the second deletes the young argument. The guide calls him restless and wide-ranging. The range includes a paper he abandoned.^[1]

A closer look

Silence Dogood is a pseudonym, not an official second persona. At 16 he used it to mock funeral speeches and Harvard students. The game guide does not list the name as another persona. It is still the best example of his method: he liked to speak in someone else’s voice and watch the room misidentify the author. Treating the mask as a real middle-aged woman misses the joke.^[1]

The guide names the agenda Civic Virtue and changes relationships according to whether governments match. The biography does not define his public life by shared constitutions. It records printing, electricity, the Declaration, France, and the Constitutional Convention. A comparison of governments is a game rule. It does not replace the document of 1776, or the year in London when the letters of credit never arrived.^{[1] [2] [3]}

In Civilization VII

The official guide names the ability The First American and the agenda Civic Virtue. The ability concerns science on production buildings, the construction of those buildings, and endeavors he starts or supports. Those are game effects. They are not the statement of the conservation of charge, and they are not the drafting record of the Declaration. The guide does not list a second persona. This essay treats him as one leader entry. The simplified Chinese guide names the same slots in its own words.^{[2] [3]}

The accessed guide does not identify an edition. The codex publishes the essay with that gap visible. The published America essay is the national documents and the later acts of the state, not this life of an apprentice, a pseudonym, electricity, and the signature of 1776. The first step back to Philadelphia and Boston is to keep those things apart, rather than to fold them into one title as the first American.^{[1] [2] [4]}